David Derish
Birth of Modern Europe (Mr. Meyers)
04/27/04
Impressionism,
Modernity, and the Haussmannization of Paris
Pierre Auguste Renoir, Pont Neuf,
Paris
Background: Social, Political, Economic, and Artistic Changes of 19th Century Paris
The second half of the 19th
century marked a period of profound change in the political, social, economic,
and artistic life of France. On
the political front, this relatively short time span of fifty years witnessed a
Revolution (1848), a coup d’etat (1851), the coming and going of three separate
Republics (1848, 1870, 1875), three foreign wars (Crimean War: 1854; Italian
War: 1859; and Prussian War: 1870), a civil war (1871), and ultimately the
restoration of sovereignty to the French people (1877). Finally after years of war and
civil upheaval, the stable French government created in the last quarter of the
century set the stage for a major shift in the social and economic life of
France. The invention of the steam
engine led to the ascent of trade and industry. Daguerreotypes changed the way everything was seen and recorded. The “grands magasins” were born. The combination of a declining birth
rate and relative economic prosperity made life better for the French people.
While the fortunes of the nobility declined, with them retaining their social
prestige but losing political influence, the bourgeoisie, in addition to
increasing in numbers and in wealth, extended its new pre-eminence to every
sphere of modern life, including finance, politics, industry, and trade. For the first time, the benefits of
civilized life reached even the lower classes of French society. Naturalism
assumed a new importance, with nature becoming citified for the urban dweller
and intimately tied to the new emphasis on leisure and entertainment, two of
the hallmarks of the social change that had occurred. The city of Paris, which had lived through the splendor and
excesses of the days preceding the Revolution, had also survived the days of
siege, famine, and civil unrest that had followed. And just as the French government had been transformed, the
city itself was reborn, largely through the efforts of Georges
Haussmann, a civic planner who helped usher in modernity to the French capital. Haussmann brought nature into the city
by providing trees, gardens, light, air, and space. His new Paris became the palette for a new, bold, and
essentially French school of art: Impressionism. The artists of Impressionism, the Impressionists, were not satisfied with
merely painting Haussmann’s Paris; they redesigned it to their own tastes,
relying first and foremost on their impressions, using sparkling brushwork, altered perspectives, and
heightened color to achieve their goal. Impressionism and the Haussmannization
of Paris are intimately tied to modernity. George Haussmann’s transformation of
Paris modernized the city, providing the landscape for its new leisure culture,
in which the Impressionists were closely involved and which they reflected in
their paintings. The Impressionists created new conventions in art to represent
the modernity of the city they observed and brought art into the present by
rejecting the conventional subjects of traditional, academic art: religion,
history, and mythology. Just as Haussmann brought modernity to the city of
Paris by transforming its landscape, so did the impressionists bring modernity
to its art, through their stylistically innovative expressions of the city and
its culture.
Impressionism and the Modernity of Paris
The Impressionists
Georges Haussmann, Impressionism, and the
Haussmannization of Paris
The Impressionists’ View of the New Paris
Definition of Terms